tml Partners recently hosted a roundtable discussion bringing together Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and Heads of Marketing from consumer financial services organisations to discuss the challenges that their businesses will face over the next five years.

The conversation was opened by James Elias, CMO of Avado Learning (Google Squared Online) and former Marketing Director of Google, who kicked off the debate with a short presentation on his view of the challenges marketers in this industry face. James centred on the rapidly evolving consumer landscape. Expectations are changing drastically and this is driven by technology. Consumers can access information rapidly, from anywhere and on multiple devices. There is more insight than ever into customers, he referenced the staggering prediction that by 2020, the internet of things will have evolved so that 50 billion ‘things’ are connected to the web. With this comes great opportunity for insight into consumer behaviour but at the same time it will drastically change the competitive environment. How are businesses ensuring that their marketing strategies are right for today, let alone tomorrow?

Following this introduction, the debate opened around the table and four themes came out: consumer behaviour and expectations; the evolving competitive environment; adapting traditional organisations to the digital age; and talent to feed innovation.